


The Love Song of Bucky Barnes

by cake0412, ElisabethMonroe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (didn't you just write a fic with that? Yes yes I did. I have a fantasy leave me alone), (it'll work itself out I promise), Anxiety, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes-centric, Hotel Sex, M/M, Mentions of Past Torture, Recovery, Sex Repulsed Bucky, but accurate catholicism, mentions of canon era homophobia, probably inaccurate traveling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-18 18:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11296056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cake0412/pseuds/cake0412, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisabethMonroe/pseuds/ElisabethMonroe
Summary: In which:Bucky Barnes lets go of James Barnes and the Winter Soldier in equal measureAnd there is a European vacation to be had





	The Love Song of Bucky Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> My beta isn't online. (Yay for outsourcing to creative writing partners)  
> The Amazing Artist is [Ivedoneit1000times](http://ivedoneit100times.tumblr.com)  
> Title kind of taken from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of St. Sebastian" because the drawing is loosely based around St. Sebastian, who will make another appearance later. In no way, shape, or form affiliated with the actual poem because I hate that poem (and on most days, that poet).
> 
> Sometimes the narration moves away from Bucky's perspective because, frankly, I can't describe how much people love and adore Bucky Barnes or hot Bucky Barnes is from his own perspective.

 

 

 

When they were kids, Steve managed to end up in the water no matter what they did. Sometimes he was shoved in by some older kids, sometimes he jumped in on his own volition. One time he fell off a boat. Actually fell off the boat. Bucky had lost count of the number of days they wasted away floating in the harbor and the nights spent lying on piers and staring at the sky. It didn’t surprise him that Steve had gone home after everything settled down. It was in their blood at this point. The terrible smell of the water after the the day got started. The stillness of it after the boats left. The lights that moved with the waves at night. All of it was nestled deep within them too. Even mentally incapacitated when he was trying to kill Fury, Bucky knew his ways around the streets without thinking about it. He’d been good at finding the quickest escape route anyway, but this was different. This was natural. It was home.

It still sounded all the same when he woke up in the morning with the window open and the muggy summer air bleeding through. Maybe Sarah wasn’t downstairs making breakfast. Maybe Rebecca wasn’t banging on the door. But Steve was still snoring and people were still shouting outside and the water still lapped at the periphery. And it was still damn hot. Bucky scowled as he peeled Steve’s arm off of his waist and dropped it back to the bed behind him. Sweat still clung to Bucky’s skin and his hair was pasted to his neck. Who opened the damn window last night?

Alright, so it was probably him but whatever. It was Steve’s fault. He was the one always saying Bucky needed to overcome his paranoia, stop checking a room three times over for any possible bug. Also, Bucky wasn’t allowed to smoke in the apartment so he leaned out the window in a pose he remembered from the 40s. And he missed the feeling of warm air and the smell of Brooklyn. Or, at least, he had until now. Now he was over it.

He sat up on the side of the bed and pulled at his sweat dampened boxers until they weren’t stuck to his thighs. Just because he could, he pulled at the dark hair there too. That had been the worst part of slowly remembering who he was again. Knowing that he’d had hair--enough that Steve and Rebecca complained about it and girls could play with--and to wake up with all of it shaved off. His chest, his legs, even his ass, which was the worst. The bed shifted behind him and Bucky stood up, shoving a hand through his hair.

“You up already?” Steve asked in a rough morning voice that hadn’t changed any at all.

“Gonna take a shower,” Bucky agreed without turning around. He stretched his arms over his head and arched his back.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Steve sighed behind him. The bed protested as Steve undoubtedly flopped back into the pillows.

“You’re half asleep,” Bucky answered with a smirk. He popped his neck and then tilted his head forward to roll his shoulders.

“Can I start drawing you again?” Steve asked. The words were muffled into a pillow and Bucky shook his head with a smile.

“You’re not even looking at me.”

“I’m always starin’ at you.”

“And you claim my paranoia is unbased.”

Steve snorted and the bed protested and then there were arms around Bucky’s waist. “I don’t think you have to worry about me,” he hummed and kissed Bucky’s neck.

“Too hot,” Bucky groaned, pulling Steve’s arm away from his waist again. “You’re the worst one I have to worry about,” he added. He leaned his head back on Steve’s shoulder but kept a decent distance between their bodies. “I wasn’t joking about the shower.”

“Yeah, I know how important it is to keep your hair looking like its best.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and elbowed Steve in the ribs. “The worst,” he emphasized. He ducked away from Steve’s lips and went to the bathroom.

“You ain’t gonna let me in?” Steve asked. Bucky shut the door as a response and heard Steve laugh.

He started the water on a scalding temperature and peeled out of his boxers, throwing them to the side and scrubbing a hand through his hair again. He rolled his shoulders back once more and tried to loosen his limbs from whatever sleep induced terror they were still locked in. It was a struggle every morning. He leaned on the sink and wiped a section of the mirror clean of fog.

The face staring back at him wasn’t his face. The eyes were sunken and dark, cast down instead of straight ahead. A jagged cut and accompanying bruise snaked from his temple to his cheekbone. When Bucky lifted his hand to his own face, bruised fingers found the injury in the mirror. He felt the shock of pain from touching it. The face in the mirror scowled terribly and lifted its eyes to meet Bucky’s and he stumbled away, tripping over his own feet and falling against the wall.

“Buck? Are you okay? What’s going on? Did you trip getting in the shower?” Steve called. Bucky didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at his hands. They were clean and tan. There was no bruises, no blood. His fingers were straight. “Bucky, answer me. You’re scaring me.” Bucky couldn’t breathe and, yeah, maybe it was time to let Steve in. His metal hand scrambled for the door handle while the other rested against his neck. There wasn’t anything there. He should be able to breathe just fine.

The door opened slowly and Steve must have looked to the shower first because it took him a while to gasp and fall and to his knees by Bucky’s side. “What happened? Are you okay?” he repeated. He reached out to hold Bucky’s face between his hands and, for just a moment, Bucky remember where he was, what he was, who he was. He reached out for Steve’s hands and clutched them tightly, pulling them down to his own chest. He tried not to hyperventilate.

“Buck?” Steve asked softly. He shifted to sit next to Bucky on the freezing tile, not minding the little beads of condensation from the shower that he could already feel soaking into his pants. Bucky still didn’t answer. He just leaned into Steve’s side. When he let go of Steve’s hand, the other man knowingly wrapped his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and held him close.

Bucky kept them like that for several long minutes until he was only breathing twice for every one of Steve’s. And then he waited a few more minutes for his heart to slow too. “I want to go back.”

“Sorry, what?” Steve asked with a frown. He pulled away to look at Bucky. His brow furrowed straight down the middle like it always had, eyebrows pulling together and lips tugging down. It was all familiar. Real.

“To...to...Azzano. And Moscow. And anywhere else they still had me. I want to take myself back. I can’t...I can’t do this. I can’t live with a shadow that isn’t mine.”

Steve squeezed tighter. “Bucky...are you sure that’s a good idea? Who knows what resets they’ve got in your brain. What if we go and…”

“Steve, please. I need to do this. I can’t be half comatose for the rest of my life. I’m tired of flinching every time I raise my voice or clench my fist.” Bucky reached up and smoothed out the crease between Steve’s eyebrows like he always had, like Sarah did when he couldn’t.

Steve caught Bucky’s wrist and brought his hand down to Steve’s chest. “I’m not going to argue with you. I just think it might be a bit much.”

“I’m ready. If I could take care of your scrawny ass when we were ten, I think I can handle a European vacation.”

“Vacation,” Steve snorted. He shook his head and stood up, pulling Bucky with him.

This was right, Bucky decided. Their hands held together with crossed thumbs and straining arms, chest to chest and nose to nose. There wasn’t any other way he wanted to be.

Steve leaned forward to kiss him with a grin and ruined the serious tableau. “I’ll start arranging travel plans. You get us packed, alright?”

Bucky pulled him into another kiss and then pushed him back a step. “I’m going to shower first.”

Steve laughed softly and nodded. “Sounds fair. I have to run into the Shield office to do some paperwork on the last mission. I can start working out arrangements and notifying people.”

“What? Captain America can’t just disappear?”

Steve smiled and softly ran his fingers down Bucky’s cheek. “Nah, I think they’d frown at that no matter how much I want to.”

“Nah, you don’t. This, all of this, means too much to you.”

“You mean more.”

Bucky ducked his head to press his lips to Steve’s cheek. “You’re so full of it, y’know?”

Steve smiled and kissed him properly. “Take your shower. I’ll have an answer for you tonight.”

\-----------------------

It was raining when their plane landed in Ireland. Steve had been bemused when Bucky suggested Ireland first off the bat. _Trynna get in touch with that heritage, huh?_ he’d joked. Bucky had just figured it was the closest piece of land to New York to get off on. He wasn’t going stay in the air for any longer than he had to.

Steve was glaring at the dark sky and the soaking wet pavement and the way the rain spilled incessantly off the awning they were standing under as they waited for a cab. Bucky, on the other hand, was chipper. It wasn’t the oppressive muggy heat of a downpour in Brooklyn in the middle of June. It was cool and cleansing. A good start to his Trek to Find Himself. He dropped his duffel bag by Steve’s feet and stepped out into the rain, turning his face up to the sky and taking a deep breath. Water slid into his mouth, landed on his tongue and quickly soaked through his shirt and hair but he didn’t mind. It was cool and relaxing and it slowed down his racing heart. It let him know he was on the ground again, not in the air. The rain was having to come meet him.

A car honked and Bucky spared an extra moment to glare before stepping back under the awning. Steve raised an eyebrow at him.

“Have a nice bath?” he asked and Bucky ignored him. As it was, he ended up having to step out of the way as people crowded around Steve for pictures. Steve, in turn, pulled him back into the group and took the pictures with his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. It was a dirty move because it meant Bucky had to smile. When people wanted pictures with him alone, they typically didn’t want him to smile. They wanted the scowly angry Russian assassin who stuck it to the government. With Steve, people wanted smiles and pretty eyes and a polite ‘aw, it’s no problem, now go do some good.’

It was bullshit. He gave a real smile for exactly one photo when two young girls walked up hand in and hand and asked for a couples photo. After that, he slouched against Steve and barely managed to pull his lips up at the corner. Still, young people giggled at the smirking effect it drew and old people were more worried about how charming Steve looked. Like he said, bullshit.

Finally the cab showed up and he hurriedly piled into it, letting Steve figure out how to sit with all of their luggage everywhere. When the driver suggested the trunk, Bucky assured him Steve had earned it. The ride to the hotel was quiet until Bucky actually saw the ‘hotel’.

“You rented us a cottage?” Bucky asked in disbelief. Steve looked slightly uncomfortable next to him. He shifted from foot to foot and then hurriedly started grabbing the rest of their bags instead of delegating it to Bucky. In fact, he was keeping his face mostly hidden, just like he had since Becca pointed out that he ended up smiling a little whenever he was lying. “Steven Grant,” Bucky warned, yanking his duffel bag out of Steve’s hands as soon as the other man stood up.

“I thought they were being hyperbolic when they said they had a quaint cottage aesthetic!” Steve defended, holding another suitcase in front of him.

“Fellas, ya’ can drown ya sorrows down at the pub. It’s’a five minute walk,” the driver assured. “Now kindly hurry up.”

Bucky grabbed the last of the bags and scowled at the driver before scowling at the house in front of them. Maybe cottage wasn’t the perfect term. It was short. One story, he thought. Maybe with a second story wrap around or something. Short though it was, it was sprawling backwards. Bucky couldn’t tell if it was built that way or added onto when someone (probably drunkenly) decided to open a cottage bed and breakfast. He thought the wooden paneling might’ve been a facade and that the back rooms had stone on their outer walls but the greeness of the area was a lot to take in all at once. It kind of hurt his eyes, actually. No longer did the perpetual mist feel fresh and cleansing. Now it was just irritating.

“You’re buying tonight.”

Steve raised an eyebrow and laughed when Bucky went stalking to the door with several of the bags. “Am I? We can’t get drunk,” he reminded, following after him and hefting Bucky’s backpack over his shoulder. Maybe he’d be a little more worried about Bucky’s soured mood if he wasn’t still trusted with this bag particularly. It was one of the silent ways Bucky communicated that Steve had to pick up on.

“Which means the tab’s gonna be huge,” Bucky called over his shoulder. Steve shook his head again and grabbed the door with his foot before it could hit Bucky square in the back. He bypassed Bucky’s loitering, another one of those silent conversations, and went to the front desk to check them in. Bucky loitered when he wanted Steve to take the lead, when he wasn’t sure what to do next, where to go. But God forbid he _ask_ for help.

“We’re way in the back. I asked for a large bed and they said this is their largest room.” Steve handed a key off to Bucky and wordlessly took his suitcase from Bucky.

Bucky raised an unimpressed eyebrow and held out his arm sarcastically for Steve to go ahead. The place was winding and crazy but also comforting. It was warm and dry and the people were happy around each other. Everything was well lit but in a dull way. It wasn’t an assault on Bucky’s eyes like the grass and persistent sunlight had been outside. The hallways weren’t tight enough to send Bucky’s cackles on end but they were homey and cramped, like a grandmother’s house during a holiday.

Steve found their door first because Bucky was admiring the warp of the wood and the sarcastic signs about alcohol and the little slips of paper people had forced between holes in the wall.

“Alright, I guess this place ain’t so bad,” Bucky conceded, walking into their room.

“What makes you say that?” Steve hummed, pulling his suitcase onto a small chest of drawers next to the armoire. “We’re only here for three days so I’m not going to unpack but I figured we’d want our necessities out.”

“No one wants to see your briefs.”

“Shut up. I meant hygiene products, shithead. That would be the whole extra bag you packed.”

“I like to smell nice. You’d do well to learn from me.”

“Why ain’t this place all that bad?” Steve asked again.

“The people who stay here have good taste in poetry.”

“Oh, like what?” Steve humored.

“Alright, listen. ‘Be not sad because all men/Prefer a lying clamour before you:/Sweetheart, be at peace again -- -/Can they dishonour you?//They are sadder than all tears;/Their lives ascend as a continual sigh./Proudly answer to their tears:/As they deny, deny.”

“What do you like about that?” Steve asked, sitting next to where Bucky had flopped across the bed. He gently ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair and pulled the loose ponytail out as he went.

“Sounds like you and Stark.”

Steve laughed and shook his head. “You’re definitely reaching.”

“Am not. How many people would follow Tony “lying clamour” Stark before they followed you? How many people try to drag your name through the mud?”

“Buck, it ain’t that bad,” Steve sighed, laying beside Bucky and kissing his cheek. “Besides, Joyce has better poems.”

“You memorize random Irish poems?”

“Joyce was a man of the people. He’s not just Irish. He’s brilliant.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve and shook his head. “God, I’m in love with a massive fucking nerd. How did that happen?”

“Oh, shut up,” Steve groaned, shoving Bucky over and laying across his chest. Bucky’s metal fingers found their way to Steve’s hair and the rain cooled metal felt good on his scalp. It was all so very natural to lay together and wrap their limbs around each other as complicatedly as possible.

“Because your voice was at my side /I gave him pain,/Because within my hand I held/Your hand again.//There is no word nor any sign/Can make amend -- -/He is a stranger to me now/Who was my friend,” Bucky murmured softly, tugging at the longer strands of hair on the top of Steve’s head.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the Joyce poem that always makes me think of you. Remember when Mrs. Green wanted us to read everything for her class? That one always stuck with me.”

“We never fought over no girl.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky said with a shrug. He’d never imagined a girl. He imagined people finding out about him and going after Steve too. He imagined people attacking Steve because of him. He imagined Steve’s hand in his. And now he thought about forgetting Steve and the way they’d fought without mercy on the freeway in DC or in the compound in Berlin. What did Joyce know about the loss of a friend because of a woman? Bucky wanted to put one of Carter’s carpal bones through her eye most days and he still never felt like he’d ever lost Steve to her. Maybe it was because Bucky wasn’t in love with her. Maybe Steve felt like he’d started to lose Bucky at that point. Maybe it was because Bucky felt like he was losing Steve because of torture, lapses in memory, and pain they’d never be able to tell each other about.

Girls were the least of their worries.

\----------------------------

By the time they ended up at the bar, Bucky still had the imprint of a pillow slip on his cheek and Steve’s hair hadn’t laid right, even after a dash in the rain. If Bucky slipped his hand into Steve’s hair again, the little curls would frame his fingers nearly perfectly. Still, Steve was a grinning mess as they stumbled through the door together and he shook water off his hair and arms at Bucky while Bucky tried to do the same back.

The bar was hot. Between bodies, dancing, food, and the heater, it was more like a dry sauna than a bar. The far edges of the room, on either side of a smooth wooden dance floor, were lit by candles on the table and small night lights plugged into the wall. The dance floor, bar, and stage were much more well lit, with heavy overhead lights that reflected bright white from the polished floor. The stage had its own row of small bottom spotlights as well as two large top spotlights.

There was a band playing fast and hard, sweating more than Bucky would have imagined mostly-stationary people should. The bar was crowded with people, but it wasn’t like a Brooklyn bar where most people sat by themselves and sulked over a glass of beer or shot of vodka or whatever. These people were shouting and laughing and shoving each other. The row--that wasn’t fair to what it was. It was at least two people deep with people standing between barstools and some places were three or four people deep. Regardless, the huddled mass in front of the bar was constantly in motion, stumbling back, rearranging. One fun guy had gone up and over a pack of friends. The place was loud and kinetic in the best way.

“Remember, pal, you’re payin’,” Bucky laughed, looping an arm around Steve’s shoulders to drag him to the end of the bar where a young woman was working to seat people and take larger orders. She didn’t even bat an eyelash at them and Bucky felt both him and Steve release a little bit of tension at the same time. Steve ordered enough food for an army and Bucky got enough alcohol for more, much to Steve’s distaste. They crowded around a small booth and watched people dance drunkenly or beautifully (or both) together.

Bucky had used to dance. Everything. He danced everything. It started off with swing dancing because his father would always come home and dance with his mother. When he was old enough, Bucky started mimicking him and Becca would rush out the door when their dad got home, stand on his feet, and let him walk her back inside before he’d step a few moves, holding onto her outstretched hands and keeping them close to his chest. When they were both big enough, Bucky and Becca would practice together, or on Steve. Bucky always danced with Steve until Becca complained enough so she could instead. It was genetic for Barneses to love Steve Rogers.

But he danced other things too. The waltz and tango as his mother taught him. Tap to irritate his mom in turn. He’d tried to spin like a ballet dancer after the first time he had gone to see the ballet--though he was never going to actually say it outloud. He’d waited until his mom had taken Becca out to a friend’s house, snuck into her room, opened the large armoire and tried to twirl in front of the mirror on the door. He’d decided, after skinned knees, rug burned hands, and a smashed nose, that he was simply too big to be a ballet dancer and being around that many girls was over rated anyway. For the most part though, anything that he could move his body to, he would try and usually succeed. Nothing quite gave him the same thrill as the Irish jig that Steve’s mother taught them though.

Never mind that it wasn’t totally certain that the Barneses were Irish. Certainly not the kind of Irish Steve was--conceived in Ireland with parents both born in Ireland before him and grandparents before that and who knew how long the line went on, Sarah Rogers thought that Bucky was close enough to an adopted Irish after being folded into the small Rogers family. He and Steve had spent countless nights in the kitchen--the only place in the apartment with decent hard flooring that wasn’t near the lower floor’s bedroom--with Sarah’s old record playing on the dining room table. They were good together, always able to anticipate each other’s next step and always in a mood to one up each other. Their competitiveness got in the way when they were trying to swing together, but it only helped elevate their jig.

Now, Bucky was noticing they weren’t shit. There were drunk guys bigger than Steve moving faster than Natasha. It was absurdly beautiful and Bucky could only stand his off beat bouncing leg for a plate of mozzarella sticks and another of fries with a fair amount of beer and two old fashioned glasses of bourbon before he stood up and pulled Steve with him. Steve made an aborted objecting noise as he stuffed a handful of fries into his mouth and followed after Bucky with a forlorn look to his own drink.

“Buck, you could just go dance. You used to be the first person out there,” Steve muttered as he let Bucky situate them closer to the wall and away from prying eyes.

Bucky’s cheeks heated slightly and he held onto Steve’s wrist a little tighter. He couldn’t remember how to dance. Not effortlessly, like he had. Muscle and memory had gone in lieu of new muscle and burned memory. He had tried, upon coming home, to dance again. Sam liked to dance and Bucky thought he’d show him what real dancing was. But when he tried, he fell into a defensive position, kicked into the air for a spin, clenched his fists when he held his hands up. It had been so bad, Sam hadn’t even offered any sarcastic analysis of the situation. He just let Bucky play it off, pretending to fall into a fighting position and lightly hitting Bucky’s good shoulder twice before running from the apartment while Bucky chased him down and left the embarrassment behind.

But now, Steve was already moving to the slow beat, reaching over to grab Bucky’s arm in a gladiator handshake. Bucky turned, as the move would suggest he do and slowly started to move his feet too. The song had more flute than he was used to and it was a little slower, which was good for his clumsy feet that kept wanting to run. Everything in his body was saying if he had to move that quickly, there was danger. Everything more incorperal than his body was telling his muscles to behave. Steve seemed to not notice Bucky’s hesitation or, if he did, he was a hell of a lot better an actor than Bucky remembered.

They stumbled through one song, let both of them swallow down more alcohol, and went back for another song. Five songs in, Bucky had found his feet again and was almost playing off of Steve’s tried and true routine. When, a few songs and several platters of food later, a familiar tune started to play, Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand and pulled him onto the dance floor. Bucky didn’t even think about how they were in front of everyone. They were back in the kitchen, listening to a record play a few feet away from them.

Bucky remembered this dance and how it always ended with him in a pile on the floor, laughing and sore. It started off slow enough. A normal jig with a lot of fiddle. As the song continued, it got faster and faster and the last minute or so was just the same few bars played over and over at a breakneck speed. Bucky and Steve had always danced it alternating sections, constantly getting faster than the other until the end when they’d turn each other around and around, throwing them back into the dance with every other repeated several bars. Bucky’s center of gravity had improved as much as anything else with his body. Still, he wanted to collapse to the floor with Steve in a heap of limbs and sweat by the time the song ended and they stumbled into each other’s chests.

Steve pressed a chaste kiss to Bucky’s mouth and then laughed with their foreheads pressed together. “You’ve been holdin’ out on me, Barnes,” he teased softly. Bucky almost couldn’t hear him over the scattered but drunkenly loud clapping around them. Their setting came back to Bucky along with the smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and worn wood. They weren’t in Sarah’s kitchen with an apple pie in the oven. But Bucky could still feel her there.

“Whatcha doin’ kissin’ me in public like that?” Bucky muttered with his own smile. He knew it was legal but that didn’t mean it was safe. Then again, what was a drunken brawl to two super soldiers?

“I don’t think anyone minded.”

Still, Bucky stepped away and wrapped his arm around Steve’s waist before taking a dramatic bow for the few onlookers. Steve laughed beside him and Bucky let him drag them back to their table. They made quick work of the food left. The adrenaline and exercise working over their appetite. They danced to a few more songs, nothing special, just having fun, and left to the teasing jeering of the crowd.

It was full on raining when they got outside but neither one of them seemed to mind. It was helping Bucky cool off, both literally and metaphorically. His skin felt like fire where the cool water hit it and he turned his face up to the sky as they walked. Steve was a comfortable weight next to him, a little bit of bounce in his step even as he said nothing.

About halfway back to the small hotel-thing, Bucky stopped. It took Steve a few paces to notice and when he did, he didn’t say anything still, just turned and raised an eyebrow at Bucky.

“Fuck the Soviet Union,” Bucky shouted to the sky. Some bird cawed in agreement or objection or irritation. “Bad news for you, you Russian bastards! I’m fucking Irish!” Another drunk voice cheered in the distance and Steve huffed out a fond breath.

“Yeah, alright McGregor,” he laughed, grabbing Bucky’s arm and pulling him forward again. “I think your barrel of alcohol affected you more than you thought it would.”

“You were drinkin’ too,” Bucky muttered, tucking himself into Steve’s side and closing his eyes as he walked. He didn’t feel drunk. Not really. His thoughts weren’t sloshy, his brain was on par for its activity recently. But he was euphoric and lighter. He wanted to scream and laugh and fall asleep all at the same time. This was home. This was something that they couldn’t take away from him, something that was never really James Barnes’ either.

This felt like a beginning. A first step in figuring out who he was now. He liked this new chapter.

\---------------------------

They spent two more days in Ireland and then hit London before catching a train to Frankfurt. Bucky’s nerves didn’t settle in until they were waiting for the train in London. They’d been able to do stupid tourist shit and take ridiculous pictures and have good food and just enjoy being alone without the threat of an emergency any time in their future.

But, now, listening to the milling of people around, listening to the same screech of the tires on the tracks, Bucky was reminded of what he was doing and where he was going. Back into Germany and from Germany into Italy. Italy was...not ideal. Sure, Italy had been a great idea when he’d been half asleep, scared into courage, and in his Brooklyn home again, but now Italy was daunting and real.

Steve squeezed his hand between them and leaned over to kiss his temple. Bucky’s nervous jittering decreased slightly, but his leg still rocked back and forth and his fingers were tapping out a beat against his thumb or clenched into a fist.

It wasn’t just Italy either. He didn’t want to be in a train, near one, or stuck on one. It wasn’t even the memories about what happened. It was the claustrophobia. It was the not knowing who was around him and the possibilities of hurting people who didn’t deserve it. But also the sheer terror he already knew was going to wrap around his stomach every time he saw a door or watched it slide open or had to walk by one.

But the train didn’t derail. There were no Nazi scientists aboard (as far as Bucky knew) and he remained securely in his seat because Steve passed out on  him within moments of the train hitting full speed. He’d always been like that. Sarah used to talk about taking him out in a stroller if he was being fussy and he would settle and fall asleep within moments. If Bucky was going somewhere with him and Steve was riding on the back of Bucky’s bike, Bucky would have to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t drifting off and liable to fall. When they were older and Steve was having a bad night, Bucky would hotwire a car and drive around the neighborhood he’d stolen the car from. Not the brightest moment of his life, but a proud one. No matter how bad Steve’s cough or fever or shaking was, Bucky would have him out in fifteen minutes tops. He was going to take care of Steve no matter what that meant. Stealing cars, working nine different odd jobs, not jumping out of a train because of anxiety about falling out of said train.

Bucky let himself get lost in midnight drives, soft hair between his fingers, and frantic prayers kept to himself. Not matter how bad it was, no matter how much he wanted to step on the gas and never ease up, to drive them somewhere where they’d be safe, where they could get good help, where everything wasn’t a fight, he forced himself to keep his foot steady because Steve needed the quiet right then, not the chase of a future. That had always been their problem, wasn’t it? Having to stay in the present without thinking of the future. A few months after he’d met Steve, when it was obvious that they weren’t leaving each other for anything, Bucky mother had sat him down and told him that there probably wasn’t a future with Steve. Not the way Bucky could see it. They probably wouldn’t settle down with girls next door to each other. There’d be no growing old with him as his side. Bucky had bawled and bawled until his mother held him and apologized for illness’ fault and Bucky fell asleep. He knew they couldn’t dream of a future like that, but even more so, there was no saving for a better apartment. There was no thoughts of a car or a steady relationship. Not when medication had to be bought, not when food kept getting more expensive, not when they refused to leave each other’s sides. And then the war came and what was the point of looking to a future when the future was probably bombs and mass death? What was the end of this war? The war to end all wars hadn’t ended all wars so what was the point of this? Stop evil? That was even more fictitious than the last goal. Bucky would die on the frontlines and Steve would die at home, unable to work enough to get medication, too stubborn to take care of himself first. There was no future.

And, honestly, there hadn’t been a future for _them_ either. There would be no settling down next to each other and growing old, just as Bucky’s mother had said when he was a kid, even before he knew he was desperately in love with his best friend. Bucky knew he wouldn’t have been able to live a life of lies and hiding. He’d become so good at faking it but the thought of waking up every day with a woman in his bed and not Steve, the thought of being close enough to touch but not actually touching, the thought of having to do all of that every single day for the rest of his life curled at Bucky’s chest in such a way that he knew the rest of his life wouldn’t have been that long. There was no future for them in the 40s so why should they think of it? They could never achieve anything for it, so why should they try?

And now. Now they were in the future. Further in the future than if they’d been planning for it. A future where there was a chance for _them_. A future where everything was still a fight but at least they could stand next to each other, hold each other when they needed to. They’d gone through hell to get here, but this future was almost a Heaven. In this future, Steve could lay in Bucky’s lap and Bucky could pet his hair in plain view of the public. In a semi-government regulated space. Under cameras and under God too. Screw flying cars. This is the future Bucky really wanted.

He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep until the train lurched to a stop in Frankfurt. Steve was sitting up, on the other side of the booth they were in and glanced up from his book when Bucky jerked away.

“Pleasant dreams?” he asked.

“What?” Bucky croaked, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You were grinnin’ like a fool. Figured you musta had some nice blond in mind.” Steve waggled his eyebrows.

“She was a redhead,” Bucky corrected, stretching his arms over his head and popping something in his back. He strained his neck and shoulders to loosen the knot that had formed between them and stood up on dead legs. He should have considered how much he hated traveling before he decided to travel.

They’d taken the night train and it was early morning when they stepped out into the train station. Coffee hung thick in the air and people in suits hurried by, women carrying heels while in sneakers and men with coats and ties over their arms. A bakery’s early morning treats wafted between bodies. It was like a normal morning in Brooklyn. There was even a kind of fishy smell. Still, it put Bucky a little on edge. It had been almost a century since he’d been here. It’d been night then but the explosions made it seem like day. They’d come down the same river that was making this smell like home. At the time, it was as far from home as he could be.

“Can you believe the last time we were here we were blowing up Nazi bases?” Bucky asked under his breath.

Steve elbowed his side and muttered back, “Behave.”

Like in 1944, they weren’t staying in Frankfurt. They were moving into Munich after a small delay. Bucky hadn’t seen much of Frankfurt. It had been dark, he’d been nervous, and it was close enough to Azzano that his body was still on the fritz. There were entire days he couldn’t remember. He’d fall asleep one night and wake up in the middle of a battle however long later.

Now he could see that Frankfurt was beautiful. Tall glass skyscrapers stood where he remembered bombs. Open plazas and shopping centers covered the same land he’d crept over in the dead of night. There were buildings with facades that suggested they’d been standing as long as Bucky had. They had survived just like he had. If Frankfurt could keep coming back, could come back even more beautiful than it had started out, Bucky could too. This was opportunity and chance. He could take it. He could grow. Sure, he had his scars but Frankfurt had made itself beautiful despite them.

He and Steve only had a few hours to explore and grab breakfast before catching their train to Munich. Germany was beautiful as it blurred by their windows and Bucky sat pressed against the window, staring at the passing country like a child seeing something for the first time. He couldn’t remember if he’d been in Munich before. Probably to pass through it or liberate something, but there was no extended stay.

Munich wasn’t as modern as Frankfurt, at least what Bucky was currently seeing. But the colors were dizzying. It was like stepping into a movie set. The buildings were coordinated together, tall facades of beach house hues and then startlingly bright flower set ups.

They were spending the night here and Steve twisted his mouth distastefully at the hotel Bucky had chosen. It was certainly no Irish cottage. But it was only for one night so he could deal. It was small and dark, set off the road and probably a lot more descript than it wanted to be. That was the problem with something that matched a stereotype. Everyone started to notice it. Still, it’s where Bucky had chosen. They had sandwiches and passed out in almost the same breath, which threw off Bucky’s schedule. They were supposed to sleep on the train.

The new schedule meant they only had time to go to the science and technology museum that evening. Sure, they could have chosen something different, but Bucky wanted this because, well, Steve cleaned up damn good. There was a small cafe just up the block from the museum and they ate there--though no cafe should have been expected to feed two super soldiers at once.  But it was nice to sit against Steve’s side and share bites of pastry back and forth and drink terribly pretentious coffee while looking nicer than they normally did. Bucky even had his hair pulled back and done up neatly. They’d gotten into no small amount of arguments over who looked better that resulted in a slightly defiled door and a draw.

The museum was certainly not a flying car right away. And the classy evening crowd was worse than the Irish airport crowd once people recognized Captain America. They couldn’t just ask for a picture and move on. They had to stand around and talk. After a few menial minutes, Steve wrapped his arm around Bucky’s waist and rubbed his side gently. A few moments later, the message clicked to the crowd and they all dispersed with slightly tense goodbyes.

“I ain’t thankin’ you in the middle of an exhibit on pianos,” Bucky muttered.

Steve rolled his eyes and leaned over to kiss his temple. “Wasn’t only for you, jerk.”

“Punk.” Bucky could feel Steve puff up at that and it put an honest smile on his face. Steve was easy to please and Bucky would take most every chance to do it.

The exhibit wasn’t as cool as Bucky had hoped. He wanted supercomputers and (Howard) Stark level coolness. Instead, it looked more like a history museum. He and Steve jostled each other back and forth when they started recognizing some of the machinary.

“Damn, Rogers, how’s it feel to be younger than something behind a glass wall in a museum?”

“Dam, Buck. How’s it’s feel to be older than me still?”

“Who do you think has been awake longer? Your straight five years or me off and on?”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re old as fuck,” Steve said with a grin, pulling them close and kissing him softly. Bucky let Steve chatter his ear off as they got more current, talking about things Natasha or Sam had explained to him. Showing him what Howard had kept doing and where Tony had stepped in. Bucky responded when he remembered something.

“I stole a car like this. Expensive as fuck, y’know?”

“Oh, man I used the proto-type of this gun. Fuckin’ almost took my arm off. Had to have it recalibrated.”

“They liked fingerprint scanners with me. And the early Hydra compound used one of these retinal scanners. Theirs stabbed you if you didn’t match though.” He reached up unconsciously to rub at a scar that wasn’t there anymore.

Then it got cool because it was the forefront of technology and this was like Howard Stark. Bucky grinned as he looked around, pulling Steve behind him as he raced to every exhibit and walked around them until he had every component memorized. Steve indulged him adn chatted with people next to them.

“Yeah, he loves engineering and technology. A real man for the future.”

“Sorry, he’s just excited. Kinda like a kid when you get him goin’.”

“Yeah, the love of my life.” That earned him a small jolt to the ribs and a judging look from Bucky. But the woman Steve was talking to laughed and patted him on the shoulder and wished them the best.

“Don’t you feel like you’re at Howard’s fair?” Steve asked as he looked around.

“I get to keep my arm around you and there’s no double date,” Bucky answered, because thinking about Howard’s fair was starting to make his stomach hurt. Howard’s fair was the last time they’d been normal. It was the last time they saw each other as two all-American kids who’d grown up together, who’d grown together. It was the last time they’d been together at all. Just Steve and Bucky. And Bucky had wasted it with a hug and dancing. How many weeks and months did it take for Steve to find him again? Even without the serum, Bucky was already changed, already broken by the war and Lohmer and cages. He’d thought the beautiful boy who loved science had been beaten to death somewhere in Austria but he was standing here again. Standing and smiling and amazed by everything the world did. He reached down for Steve’s hand and held it tightly. He was never leaving again.

\-----------------------------------

 

Bucky was still working off the high of the museum, still excited and terrified and wondrous. He had Steve again. It was like a second chance at his deployment night all over again. There was no need for tears and drinking and sloppy hook ups. Steve was right there and Steve loved him and no one was going to say anything, even at this seedy hotel. Maybe especially at this seedy hotel.

Bucky turned suddenly in bed, pressing against Steve and he could feel him react almost immediately. The tight set of his shoulders eased and he leaned into the touch, an arm going for Bucky’s waist. Bucky let his own hand rest over Steve’s heart. His big, beautiful working heart. How had he ever managed to listen to it stutter and shake in his chest? It had been a miracle every time he woke up in the middle of the night. He could cry of happiness to hear it putter nigh-on uselessly in his ribs. And now his heart was as big as all the love in his body and it was strong and sure and there was nothing that could hurt him. Reluctantly--because he could feel Steve’s heart all day without stopping--Bucky slid his hand down his chest and over his stomach. He felt Steve take a quick breath in. He was solid, even relaxed like this. There was no definition to his musculature, just the mass of it, but his hips were still trim and the weight distributed evenly. He was a fuking miracle of biology. Then he slid his hand between Steve’s legs and ran the flat of it over his crotch slowly.

“Bucky...what do you think you’re doing?” Steve asked in the most strained voice Bucky had ever heard from him. He looked up through his lashes and pressed a little bit firmer between Steve’s legs.

“You sayin’ no, doll?” he asked, low and rough. He knew how to play Steve. He’d seen what he watched, listened to Sam’s stories and compiled everything that Natasha had told him. Steve wasn’t a hard picture to paint once you laid all the pieces together.

“I...I…” Bucky could see a muscle working low on Steve’s jaw and his chest was puffed up more than it normally was. His breaths were shallow and his eyes shifty and curious and worried.

“You what, doll?” He gripped Steve through his sweatpants and drew out a high keen from Steve, who let his head drop back. His arms were shivering as he leaned on his elbows to keep himself propped up. “Relax, babe. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“I thought you didn’t do this.”

“You look like you could use the relief.”

Steve blinked up at him before clambering up on the bed and away from Bucky. Bucky’s hand fell to the comforter and he raised an eyebrow at Steve.

“I ain’t gonna take advantage of you. I ain’t gonna make you do something you ain’t into just ‘cause I am.”

“You ain’t makin’ me do nothin’. Now get that ass back over here,” Bucky snapped.

“ _That_ ass?” He gave up his shocked expression in lieu of a bemused one. “Now you sound like Barton.”

“Don’t you start that with me.” Bucky wrapped his fingers around one of Steve’s calves and pulled him down the bed again. “Ain’t no one ever gonna make me do what I don’t wanna do ever again, got it? Especially not some golden retriever looking Brooklyn boy.”

Steve smiled softly and brought his hand up to Bucky’s cheek. “I just want to make sure this is good for the two of us.”

“I’m...paying attention. Learning. You’re always good to me, Stevie,” Bucky insisted. He leaned into Steve’s hand, the gesture familiar and comforting, picked up from Sarah Rogers two life times ago.

“You don’t have to do anything for me, okay? As soon as you don’t feel like it, you can stop. I can take care of myself.”

Bucky pushed Steve back with his human hand firm in the center of his chest and followed after to kiss him hard. “Rogers, shut up.”

Steve whimpered and didn’t try to follow Bucky when he sat back again. Bucky crooked Steve’s leg and braced it against his own side before running his metal fingers over the inside of his thigh. Steve shivered under him and let his head drop back. Bucky could feel his heartbeat kick up under his hand and he smiled softly.

Steve’s body had been betraying him for as long as Bucky knew him. From the asthma attack in the middle of the water the first time they met to his perpetual motion in church even after repeated warnings to the bright red blush that stained his face as soon as he was remotely embarrassed, angry, or upset, the easiest way to know Steve was to pay attention to his body. Bucky could read Steve’s every thought through his heart beat and his flipped lips and the way the veins in his hands stood out against the pale skin. He was a book of physiological tells and Bucky knew every line. Right now, if Steve’s heart was to be trusted, his thoughts were screaming Bucky’s name.

He kept his fingers light against Steve’s leg as they worked their way to his waistband. He slowly pulled Steve’s pants down, getting to the dip of his perfect ass before he let go of his equally perfect chest to pull both sides down together. Steve sucked in a quick gasp and lifted his hips, though Bucky wasn’t entirely sure he was aware of the movement. He only moved away from Steve’s body to finish pulling his pants off before he wrapped Steve’s legs around his waist again.

For all his noise, Steve was only half hard, cock flopped over on the crease of skin between his thigh and his hip. Bucky straddled his thigh and ran his human hand down Steve’s chest, to his opposite hip and over that tight expanse of skin to the other. He stopped a few inches short of Steve’s length and dragged his fingers through the fair hair that curled at his groin, slipping his fingers down to his ass and then down his opposite thigh.

“Buck,” Steve groaned, shifting slightly as he tucked his arm under his head to stare at Bucky with blown pupils and a slack jaw. His lips parted prettily in the middle, leaving just enough room to see the tips of his front teeth. Bucky knew that if he opened his mouth anymore, his canines would come to a point on the same line and the rest of his teeth rested just a fraction higher. When he tried to sit up, Bucky quickly pushed him back down and rested his metal hand just against his collarbone. He couldn’t be sure that the stirring against his thigh wasn’t just jostling so he moved his hand higher on Steve’s neck and squeezed gently. Steve’s cock pulsed against Bucky’s thigh and he raised an eyebrow.

“Really, Rogers?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Steve stretched his neck under Bucky’s hand and his eyes fell shut, mouth hanging open and revealing those perfect teeth. Bucky leaned over to kiss him, keeping it light and pulling back in the same increments Steve pushed up. “Baby, don’t tease,” Steve whined, and just to be very on the nose, Bucky grabbed his length in hand and pumped up and down twice. Steve’s mouth opened perfectly under Bucky’s and Bucky took his moan without letting a single sound wave escape. This was all his.

Steve shifted his legs further apart and wrapped one around Bucky’s waist and tugged him closer with a heel in the small of Bucky’s back. Bucky knew it should feel like Heaven. And it did feel like they fit together, like they were supposed to be tangled like this. There just wasn’t anything going on in his own crotch. His heart was more than happy to hear Steve moan and to feel his reactions, but that was it. That had been all there was since they found each other in this life.

Bucky smoothed his thumb along the vein on the bottom of Steve’s cock and watched him struggle under Bucky’s hand. Violent, needy shivers wracked his strong body and Bucky moved his hand away from Steve’s throat. The faint yellow marks where his fingers had been lifted from his pale complexion quickly and that sent more of a surge through his body than the rest of this. He was more than capable of using all of his body to make Steve feel good and he didn’t have to worry about hurting him. Steve _wanted_ him to use all of his body. It felt like an arrow was bursting through his chest. Not in a painful way. More like his heart had been attached to it and had been aiming all this time and now got to fly to its destination.

Steve was always going to be that destination. Making Steve happy was always going to be more important. The idea of making him feel good sent Bucky’s heart thrumming in his chest and to stop it, to work out some of the energy that was shaking his arms and legs, he leaned down and sucked a more permanent bruise against Steve’s neck. It was high and prominent, not easily covered, especially in these hot, active days. It would only last a day or so, if that, but Bucky liked it. Maybe he’d add on to it every morning. Especially if Steve’s whiny moan was going to be indicative of his reward each time.

Bucky hadn’t even realized he hadn’t stopped pumping his hand until Steve was suddenly coming hot between their bellies with gasped breaths that sent his chest pounding into Bucky’s. Bucky sat back slightly and his thigh pulled against Steve’s balls the whole time. Steve keened high pitched and bit his lip hard.

“Fuck, doll. Don’t…”

“I didn’t...I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know I was against you,” Bucky stuttered, half apology, half defense. He kneeled back and gently unhooked Steve’s leg from his waist. Steve didn’t help. He laid on the bed and continued to gasp in breaths and stare at the ceiling. “Are you broken?”

“I haven’t...I haven’t had….fuck, Buck,” he groaned. He pressed both of his hands over his face but his cherry red blush was all the way down to his nipples and he wasn’t fooling anyone. “I haven’t felt like that....ever.”

A small smile pulled at Bucky’s lips and he carefully made his way to his side of the bed. Steve turned over and pulled them close, lying chest to chest with their heads bowed together. He tangled his legs around Bucky’s but kept as much distance between their mid-sections as possible. When he reached for Bucky’s crotch, though, he was met by the same flesh and tendon softness of the rest of his body.

“Really?” he asked in disbelief. “None of that did anything for you?” He kneaded his fingers against Bucky’s length and it didn’t feel like much of anything to Bucky. He shrugged and Steve frowned. “I’m sorry, baby.” He removed his hand and Bucky let out a soft breath.

“We should go shower,” he mumbled, even as his eyes were falling shut. It was a lot of action, a lot of silent confession, a lot of exploration for one night.

“We can shower in the morning,” Steve assured softly.

“Room service.”

“Doll, you wake up when someone walks too hard on the street. I think you’ll hear roomservice and tell them to fuck off before anyone gets in here.”

That was fair. Bucky let himself relax. He was too exhausted to dream.

\--------------------------

The next day they moved into Austria. If Bucky’s stomach had been knotted and nervous in Germany, he was downright panicking now. It presented itself in nitpicking everything around him. The way Steve packed his suitcase. The way breakfast looked. How cold his drink was or wasn’t. Whether or not they’d make the check in for their hotel with how fast the bus or taxi was moving. There was no train into Austria, so Bucky had had to plan for other transportation but they had to get into Austria before they could rent a car. The problem with getting into Austria was that Austria’s borders were all mountains. How did those Nazi bastards get hundreds of prisoners from Italy and everywhere else into this stupid country. Why was Bucky going back?

Even Steve looked uneasy when they finally got into Austria and the mountain faces all started to look similar. Had that been it?  Was it that curve? Would the railroad even still be there? Of course it wasn’t here. They were coming in North and the train was next to Italy. Brenner Pass, Bucky had decided based on reports of where the Russian had taken him and where the train might have once been. This was north. This was villages and towns and cities. It wasn’t the past. Fuck, this was beautiful. Austria looked like something out of a fantasy book. This isn’t where people fell to their (would be) deaths. This is where knights started, where they had to come back to save. Bucky couldn’t believe he was a knight, that the Soldier was ever the proto-type for a hero. Yet here he was, living the plot points, the Soldier sitting in his past, providing his foundation.

Despite what the imposing mountains and the general Tolkein feel of the tall trees, stone buildings, and neat homes, getting around Austria was easy as long as they stayed on the main road and soon they were midway through the country and darkness was falling. Bucky had planned for this and already knew where he was going to stop. The hotel was more of a motel, run down and off set but it was secure, it was on the way, and it was cheap. He’d always been after cheap. It wasn’t even necessarily left over from the 40s. The Soviets were in decline by the time he was cognizant enough to be trusted with funds and their military science experiment wasn’t getting enough money as it was. Then HYDRA only left him with limited cash. If a mission went wrong, if he couldn’t find a safe house, he’d never had more than a few hundred units to spend for safety and food for however long. He’d been rationing like he had before the war and during the war. Steve said he was just dramatic. And sure, maybe Steve was right. Maybe Bucky was making a few decisions based around books and movies and how he expected something like this to go. If  the seedy hotel he’d booked them was proof, Steve was very right. But Bucky was used to finding the more obscure, non descript, wary place he could. Something set off the road that would keep more pleasant types out. But, also, if he was going to go hunting down Nazi science bases and stealing his identity back, it was kind of imperative to look the part right?

This seedy hotel, like all seedy hotels, had thin walls dividing rooms, much less dividing the bathroom from the bedroom. And Steve was loud on the quietest of days. And Steve had never been good at controlling himself. Bucky was shaken down to his core when he heard the first moan. And his feelings quickly changed on the matter when Steve got louder and more frequent. Eventually Bucky stood up--face as hot as he thought it might have ever been--and went downstairs to the vending machines.

Even the heat of the evening and the stillness of the air wanted to take part in his pretend aesthetic. The sky was dark as ever this far from the rush of the city and the noise of the highway. The moon shone down without wavering. The dirty flourescent of the hotel hall kept any of the natural light away though, even as it flickered unsteadily overhead.  Everything was as full of life as it was lifeless. A dog barked somewhere nearby and a chain fence rattled. Bucky couldn’t see anything, though. Nothing was real. It was all just potential, a paradox of sound and sight.

None of the vending machines worked but he kept fiddling with them. A minute passed, and then five, and then ten. That should be enough time, he thought. He kicked the useless machine and headed back to the room. Steve was drying his hair while staring at the staticy TV.

“Tony’s gala was tonight,” Steve said over his shoulder. He sat on the edge of the bed and threw the towel in the corner of the room. He was nonchalant as could be. He didn’t know Bucky could hear. “Where did you go?”

“Wanted a coke. The ones on our floor didn’t work so I wandered around until I found another.” Fuck, he didn’t actually have a coke to show for it. “They’re all shit.”  Better.

“That sucks. Hey, have you been talking to Tony recently?”

“Huh?” Bucky tore his gaze away from the basketball shorts Steve was wearing. He just got dressed after that? Just put on clean clothes like he hadn’t just…

“The gala’s for a scholarship him and Pepper have put together.”

“And?”

“And it’s an art school scholarship.”

“Oh.” Bucky breathed out a laugh. “Yeah, I did talk about that. That’s been a while though. I didn’t think he was going to do anything.”

“Wow, that’s sweet of you, jerk.”

“Oh, shut up. You ain’t in art school no more. Just tired of kids giving the same stupid excuse you did. You poor starving artists.”

Steve laughed and shook his head. “Get cleaned up. I want to go hiking tomorrow. I’m gonna pass out now.”

Bucky shrugged and tugged a hand through his hair. Steve threw himself down in the bed and mashed his face against the pillow. Within seconds, he was snoring. Lucky bastard. Bucky turned off the TV and started into the bathroom, undressing as he went.

The worst part of coming back to himself and remembering who he’d been--worse than the shaving and forgetting how to dance--was knowing that he’d been a real casanova in the day. Now, whenever he thought about it, he just felt hollow.

When they could afford a pumpkin--or when he and Steve stole one out of a farm somewhere where no one knew what they looked like--Becca was vicious about getting every single string of pulp out of the pumpkin. She’s scrape a spoon against the sides until it was as smooth as the outside. One year, right when she was figuring out that she wasn’t as strong as Bucky but before she’d accepted it, she actually bent one of Mrs. Rogers’ spoons right at the joint from the head to the handle. Okay, well, she’d never really accepted it, but she stopped breaking spoons after that. The pumpkin was so clean, it ended up rotting faster in some places because there wasn’t really another layer to the rind.

That was how Bucky felt when he thought about going to bed with someone. He couldn’t find even a little bit of interest in it. And that killed him. He remembered how it used to feel, how much he would risk for a cocky smile and strong jaw. Now, he had Steve in his bed, strong and healthy, and it would be so, so, so legal to do anything he wanted but he couldn’t make his body agree. The disconnect drove him insane.

He watched porn and he stared at Steve and he _tried_. He tried so hard to convince his body that this was what he wanted. It never worked. Brooklyn, New York, Paris, London, Azzano. So far, nothing bit.

Well, until now. It was fast and unexpected and it left Bucky a little dizzy. And, as always, it was Steve’s fault. Because, holy shit, Steve had been in this shower too and Bucky had heard him. Had he faced under the shower head or out the other way? The entire shower was dripping with water so there was no way to tell if he’d cleaned a certain spot or not. Bucky turned under the water and braced his forearm against the wall. Had Steve stood like this? Bucky’s cock pulsed between his legs and he quickly reached down to grab ahold of it.

Yeah, alright. That was good. For the first time in seventy years, that felt so fucking good. The water running over his parted lips muffled the sound of his gasp and he tilted his head forward against the wall. Steve had definitely stood like this. Goosebumps rose over his body even as steaming water streamed over his skin. He could almost feel Steve’s hands on his hips. Feel the solid weight of his chest against Bucky’s back or the way his crotch slotted just right against Bucky’s ass. He could feel the corded muscles of Steve’s arm wrapped around his waist as he reached for Bucky’s length too. His calloused hands moving just above Bucky’s and the pull of skin on skin was tangible and Bucky gasped again, this time letting it fade into a small moan.

He moved his fist a little faster and, yeah, that was still good. Already, his legs were starting to tremble and he could feel the muscles in his stomach start to drop out from under him and get hotter.

“Jesus, no, not  yet,” he willed his body through gritted teeth. His body didn’t listen. It only took a few more panted breaths before he was coming hard out of his fist and against the wall. Some voice in the back of his head--maybe it was James Barnes of the 40s, maybe it was Steve, fuck it might’ve been Sam--made some snide comment about being surprised his balls weren’t just full of dust after all this time. Bucky couldn’t care. He gasped in a breath now, staring at his softening cock in hand and the mess on the wall. Eventually his legs said no thank you and he found himself sitting on the shower floor, still staring at the wall.

His mess was dripping down the slicked tile and when it got a little lower, Bucky reached out to smooth a finger back up the wall, collecting spunk as he went. He only marveled at it for half a second before quickly gagging and holding his hand under the water. Still, that was his. He did that. It wasn’t dust. It wasn’t made up. It wasn’t a memory. It was real and it was new and he did that. His legs were still shaking even as he sat still and the occasional burst of blood back into his cock made him want to start all over again right now. People said Steve could go several rounds in a row. Then again, Steve didn’t take a century off. Well, not like Bucky had.

He slowly got to his feet and cupped his hands so the water jetted off of them and against the wall. He worked the gunk down slowly and then reached for some toilet paper just to make sure and flushed it after. He made quick work of his shower after that. He was slowly learning to enjoy things, and showers were easy to get lost in, but, still, if he took any longer, Steve would start to get suspicious and he might come looking. Bucky wanted to hold onto this moment as his own for just a little bit longer.

Once he was dressed and dried enough to crawl into bed with someone else, he crept back out. The TV was back on, which was weird because Steve was in mostly the same position he’d been left in. Bucky turned the set off again and slipped into bed next to Steve. He felt the man’s arm go around his waist and his face tuck against Bucky’s neck.

“You peed in the toilet instead of the shower,” he mumbled.

Bucky frowned in confusion and but was equally amused. “Ain’t gonna piss in a public shower.”

“It’s already fucked anyway.”

“You get filthy when you’re half conscious.”

Steve pulled them closer and didn’t reply. Bucky closed his eyes and let his body relax against Steve. It wasn’t staring at a mountain and raising his middle finger up high, but it was taking back something he’d lost from it. This might’ve been better.

\-------------------------

“Jesus, fuck, Steve,” Bucky gasped, hands on his knees, eyes squinted against the sun as he tried to find Steve’s silhouet in the rocky mountain.

“Come on, Barnes. This ain’t that hard.”

Bucky was not in agreement. The day had set in sticky and humid from the mid morning and now, now that they were at the top of the mountain, now that they had no choice but to continue on, now the heat had reached a degree that had Bucky’s arm whirring to cool him down. It wasn’t that it actually hot. There was no Brooklyn summer to be found here. But the warm way they’d dressed for the high climb and the open sun without wind and then the physical exertion on top of that was making Bucky over heat.

Bucky glared at Steve, or at least in the general direction that he thought Steve might be. He was regretting not grabbing a walking stick like Steve had. Even if he looked like a fantasy wizard, it must’ve been easier for him to walk than Bucky. Bucky was to the point of just crawling on his stomach. His metal arm was stronger than his legs and this was bullshit.

Suddenly Steve’s arm was around Bucky’s waist, pulling him up the path and onto somewhat level footing. He passed over a water bottle that took too much effort to drink from but Bucky managed anyway. His own stash was depleted and he didn’t bother passing this one back to Steve.

“How much further do we have to go?” He took a few more steps ahead of Steve, trying to get out of the way of more enthusiastic hikers. How could someone be more in shape than a super soldier? To be fair, most people didn’t have a computer attached to their arm.

When Bucky straightened and glared at the horizon, Steve fell silent, his bemused smile falling into something a little more awe-ful. His fingers itched for a pad and water colors because he would never be able to capture this on his phone. He tried anyway. Bucky’s face was in profile to the bright sun and it haloed his head perfectly, equidistant all around.

Bucky groaned when he saw the camera come out. “Don’t be a fucking sap,” he pleaded, but he knew better than to move. There had been one time recently when Bucky had been laying on the couch reading and Steve came out and took about seventy different pictures with different shading and different angles. Bucky finished twenty more pages before Steve decided he was done. Steve still wasn’t drawing like he used to but Bucky could see his artist’s fingers itching for more.

“You look so pretty, Buck,” Steve laughed. He ducked when Bucky threw a clod of dirt at him. “Come on, don’t break the goods.”

“Would that be your phone or your perfect nose?” Bucky retorted before a grin pulled at his lips. Steve reached forward to grab Bucky’s waist again and pulled him a few more steps before Bucky squirmed free and grabbed his walking stick. “I can do it on my own,” he assured. Steve laughed and shoved at his shoulder.

“Go on then,” he said with a nod toward a higher sumit.

There were obvious foot trails in the mountains. What the fast moving train and thick winter snowfall in 1945 hadn’t shown was the tall, healthy pine trees that covered the valleys and most of the pass. The ground, then, was crumbly and most of the foot paths were loose rock and soil that had been trodden into something slightly more stable than if they were to go tromping through the trees themselves. The paths were the safest they could be while in the mountains but that didn’t stop Bucky from eyeing them distastefully. Still, Bucky moved forward because that’s what soldiers did, that’s what the Soldier did.

The next checkpoint they got to was a small enclosed area that allowed hikers to venture into the thicket of trees and on the other side was an unobstructed vision of the whole pass. The road wove at the very bottom, grey and overdeveloped and nothing like Bucky had fallen off of. Nothing like what he’d fallen _onto_. Pine trees made sense. He remembered it smelling like Christmas when he came to on the ground. He’d passed out before he’d actually hit the ground so he didn’t know if he’d hit trees or anything. He just thought he’d died and Christmas with Mrs. Rogers was Heaven. He could almost smell apple pie too but when he lifted his head and saw blood and no arm, he figured it must be Hell. Pain and close enough to smell home but not actually there. He passed out again and didn’t wake up until he was being dragged from the snow. Then it didn’t smell like pine needles, just copper and death. He could get used to the smell of rubber and exhaust instead.

He glanced back over his shoulder when he felt Steve come up behind him, made sure no one was around, and then shouted, “Fuck blast rays and fuck trains and fuck the snow and fuck the serum and fuck the shield!”

“Bucky,” Steve sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

But Bucky was laughing and he felt as light as he ever had. He gripped onto the edge of the railing and relaxed his shoulders. James Barnes’ story didn’t have to be his story. There was no fate line that said as soon as he took himself back, he’d have to fall like James all over again. He wasn’t caught in an impossible loop. He was here with Steve at his side. He was standing over what should have been his grave and he was laughing at it.

Then he slipped.

He wasn’t totally sure how it happened. He didn’t remember moving his feet at all. The rocks hadn’t felt loose under him. No looser than anything else he’d been on. But there he was falling, backwards thankfully, and his metal hand closed around the railing and Steve suddenly had both arms around him. They managed to get a step away, the railing bending under Bucky’s strain. Bucky went to his knees as soon as they were away from the ledge and Steve followed, pulling Bucky to his chest and holding onto him tightly.

For someone who’d been burning up a half second ago, Bucky’s blood was ice and he was shivering bad enough to be hurting himself against Steve’s body. He couldn’t press close enough to him, couldn’t get far enough away from the ledge. He felt like a dog who’d been zapped by an electric fence wire, tucking tail and cowering away.

It took a little while for Bucky to notice that Steve was shaking violently too. His fingers were dug deep enough to leave bruises in Bucky’s arms and chest and thigh and wherever else he was reaching to hold him. His face was pressed firmly against Bucky’s hair and they must have been a sight, holding each other like they’d come back from death (they had), close to tears (past close), and rocking like children (they felt like it).

“Jesus Christ, Bucky,” Steve choked out. His arms tightened around his best friend and Bucky felt his chest hitch. “Be more careful, you shit.”

Bucky pressed impossibly closer and nodded mutely. Maybe he and James Barnes weren’t so disconnected after all. Still, he hadn’t fallen and here he was in Steve’s arms again. James couldn’t say that. There was no going back to the Soldier here. Bucky went limp against Steve’s chest and let the relief wash over him in powerful waves.

Well who said recovery was always upwards anyway? Bucky held Steve’s hand tightly the entire time they went back down the mountain.

\-------------------------------------------

Always upwards had been the motto of the church Sarah Rogers finally settled at. She’d left Our Lady of Sorrows church after they preached against the influx of European immigrants. They’d left St. Joseph’s when they preached for segregation. Holy Rosary Church was (ironically) against women’s rights. On and on she’d gone until she found Father Stan’s church. He was kind and open minded. He didn’t make a fuss over a single woman walking in with two little boys who were very different from each other. He never asked her to explain anything, even if she was innocent of all assumptions. The people had been accepting and the other children well behaved and fun. It was the perfect church for them and, even when it tore open stitched together hearts after she died, Steve and Bucky continued to go.

Even with knowing that Father Stan probably wasn’t open enough for someone like Bucky, even if the image of the altar loomed behind his eyes every time he went to his knees in some alley, he hadn’t understood true hurt from the church until Sarah died. How could God let His best creation go before she’d done as much good as she could do? How could he punish one family so much? What kind of God would let someone like Bucky keep walking, fit as a fiddle, while Steve almost died every other week and Sarah died slowly and painfully? It didn’t make sense. And it hurt more than Bucky could put into words. And then the war came and all faith left him then.

Exhaustion had worn down on him and Steve differently. After the near catastrophe on the pass, Bucky’s mind hadn’t stopped whirring. He was thinking back on all of his lives, trying to memorize as much about this one as possible. He was firing on all pistons and ready for anything (equally unready for everything). Steve had been sluggish, though. Like his own mind had suddenly stopped and refused to start working again. They were supposed to go out for lunch but ended up going home and crawling into bed. Steve was passed out before Bucky could find a number for take out and when he woke up to eat, he was still slow and cautionary. Now he laid beside Bucky, lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t a terrible or uncomfortable silence, but it wasn’t the comforting presence they normally held between them. Bucky broke it when the quiet finally worked its way too far under his skin.

“Do you remember what name I got confirmed under?” Bucky asked, running his fingers up and down his chest and stomach.

Steve hummed and burrowed under the blanket more. “Saint Sebastian. Toughest guy on the block.” He smiled gently and nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Do you remember why I chose him?”

“Because you had the foresight to see that one day you’d be tortured and come out of it a better person?” Bucky jammed his elbow into Steve’s ribs hard enough to jar both of them. “Sorry, that was out of taste. You and half the class used him ‘cause he was the patron saint of athletes.”

Bucky brought his fingers up to his nose and ran the pad of his middle finger along a scar he’d gotten playing baseball and breaking his nose on a bat. “Nah. I mean, yeah, but that wasn’t why I chose him.”

“Why did you choose him then, Buck?” Steve humored.

“He was the patron saint of illness.”

“Huh. You never got sick.”

“Yeah, well, I figured he had to be influencing one of us if we were gonna get you out of the decade alive.”

“And look at how that worked out. Is there a patron saint of Frankenstein?”

“I don’t know which one us you’re talking about, but shut the fuck up.”

Steve laughed and turned over to mash his face into the pillow. The soft bed moved with him in a wave and the body warmed blankets settled over Bucky’s legs again. Steve blindly reached over for his bedside lamp and sent the room into darkness with one hard pull. When his hand hit the end table, the wall phone bounced to the floor.

“Never thought it was St. Sebastian that was protecting you. That got you the serum.”

“What was it then? Aside from German scientists.”

Bucky didn’t answer. The entire speech, the entire confession, was ready on his tongue but now he couldn’t find it in himself to say it to the dark. This entire trip had been nothing but emptying his soul out and trying to piece it all back together again and now, at the least invasive part, he was losing his tongue. It was so far buried in his chest that he had to go in with tweezers to extract it out and he had to pull past years and years of neglect and denial. And shame. It hurt worse than pulling knives out of muscle and bone.

“I didn’t remember your mom until 1963.”

Bucky could feel Steve’s pensiveness beside him as he tried to calculate the shift in conversation. “Why’d you remember her?”

“I dreamed about her. I mean, I’d been dreaming about her. I just didn’t know who she was.”

“Why was 1963 any different?”’

“It was the first time she was angry.”

“Ma never got angry at you.”

“Yeah, but I saw her angry at you plenty.”

Steve reached over to press his hand over Bucky’s face and Bucky let it stay for a few seconds before shoving his arm away.

“She was just shouting a storm. ‘James Barnes, do you know how long it’s taken to get a Catholic in office? And such a nice young man. Isn’t he like Stevie?’ To be fair, I didn’t know who Stevie was and I wasn’t particularly aware that the president was a Catholic other than that we thought about attacking him when he was going to church or something. Bet she woulda really lost it then.”

“Bucky…”

“Yeah, but listening to her shout, it just clicked into place. It was...strange. Everything shouted ‘mom’ but a smaller voice whispered, ‘not yours’. I just...knew.”

“What did you dream about her before?”

“Just...she’d be standing there talking to me, telling me she loved me, that I could do it. Always that she loved me. Even when I killed her favorite president that she didn’t even get to see. ‘You know I love you, but that was just a new level of stupid.’” Bucky smiled softly at the ceiling.

“Ma woulda hated that he cheated on his wife.”

“Hm?”

“I just...don’t worry if she was really watching and thinking that shit. She wouldn’t have thought he was any good at being a Catholic ‘cause he just kind of slept with whomever.”

“She didn’t care who I slept with.”

“Let’s be honest, you weren’t getting nearly as much as you pretended.”

“No, I mean.” Bucky’s heart kicked up in his throat and he glanced towards the mirror closet door to his right. “She knew. She knew from the get go.”

“What? I mean, she knew a lot from the get go.”

“That I was…you know.”

“Gay?”

“In love with you.”

Steve shifted onto his side and stared at Bucky with his arms folded under his head. The silence settled heavy over the hotel room and it was getting harder and harder for Bucky to lift it again. Silence protected. Another part of him wanted to say silence obscured. And it had been obscuring for the better part of a century now.

“She was okay with it, but I wasn’t. I mean, I was fine with people bein’...y’know. But I couldn’t...I couldn’t deal with it. Even when I was risking life and limb,” both of them cringed at the out of place saying, “I mean, even when I was riskin’ gettin’ caught in some back alley or at the bar…”

“I knew it.”

“Shut up.” There was a bar at the docks that no one ever said anything about but everyone knew. It was the early version of don’t ask, don’t tell, Sam liked to laugh. The docks were the busiest part on their side of town, bringing in travelers, workers, and tourists from all over the country. They were bound to get enough sea weary people with certain similar wants to support an illicit business. Bucky frequented it more than he liked to admit. Hell, he cleaned up in the water before he went in. His success rate as a charming, clean young man was equal to his success rate as a hard-working, sweaty one, but he liked to be clean if he was going to have someone’s hands, and mouth, on him. He preferred the people he was putting his hands, and mouth, on to be clean as well, so it was only fair. He hadn’t told Steve in all those years.

“Even then, I was prayin’ every night. God, down on my knees in the kitchen, hands together, pressed against my head. I tried it all. Next to a hot stove fire, on grits, holding a knife. None of the penance worked. I thought it was my fault. I thought...I thought if I could just stop bein’ the way I was, you’d get better. I thought God was punishing me by killing you every other day.”

“Buck, come on…” Steve tried to soothe. He knew better than to grab Bucky in the middle of a something like this. Bucky was more in his own mind than he was in the present. Forcing him from one into the other wasn’t going to turn out well for anyone involved.

“And...and...then I got shipped off and it stopped and you showed up lookin’ all…” He gestured in the air. “But, it couldn’t fucking last. Of course it couldn’t with you looking so good and _being_ so good. I was right back where I started. I wanted you even more. I needed you… And then He threw me off a train for it.”

“Christ, Bucky, that’s not…”

“Isn’t it?”

“God didn’t throw you out of the train. Nazi bastards with bazookas did.”

“Aint it funny how it ain’t never God’s fault that the bad shit happens? It ain’t his fault Sebastian got filled with arrows or clubbed to death. But it’s His damn miracle that Sebastian walked away from the first set. Joan of Arc’s voices were God, but her death was all man. These fucking wars… Shit, we were all out there praying to the same deaf bastard. No one was answering none of us.”

“Bucky!”

“When was the last time you went to church? Before the serum? I guess they read you your rites before that. Brought a priest in for confession. They used to do that shit to us too. If we had time, there was priest and everyone who wanted to could confess and get absolved before a big battle. It’s how we knew they thought we were gonna die.”

“Bucky, please stop,” Steve pleaded, reaching over to pull Bucky against his chest. He wrapped his arms around Bucky’s head and held him close enough that it was actually making Bucky’s nose ache for how it was pressed to his chest.

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and gripped Steve’s shirt tightly. “I’m so fucking tired of bein’ alone.”

“You aren’t alone, Buck. You’ll never be alone again,” Steve promised, kissing the top of Bucky’s head and holding him closer.

But what the fuck did physical distance mean when God wasn’t listening and Bucky wasn’t listening to himself either? What was the point of any of it? What was the point of this? If distance meant presence, the Winter Soldier would never be gone and James Barnes would still lurk in the shadows, just visible enough to remind Bucky what a failure he was. But then Steve’s hand moved to Bucky’s back and settled between the scars, not touching any of them at any point. He was warm and strong and had shifted away from Bucky just slightly. Maybe distance didn’t matter, then. Maybe presence was intimate knowledge and silent comfort. The Soldier was silent but he wasn’t comforting or comfortable in Bucky’s head. He didn’t know anything about Bucky. And James Barnes skulked around, loud and abrasive and just as ignorant. Steve knew. Steve understood.

Bucky settled in his arms and let the tremors that had started to rack his body slowly ease. He couldn’t remember shaking but now he was astutely aware of each strong convulsion in Steve’s arms as they got further and further apart. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Steve’s shirt was wrinkled when he let go of it finally but Steve wouldn’t mind. Bucky wouldn’t mind if he touched the scars either and he slowly shifted his body until Steve’s hand laid on the burnmark against his side. Steve didn’t say anything, just rubbed his thumb in a long arc over his skin. Silent comfort.

\-----------------------------

There was a call in from New York the next morning that cut their vacation by a week. Steve was needed for some special ops mission. Nothing high risk, so the request said. Bucky thought that might be the sender taking into account that Bucky would be standing right over his shoulder. It was supposedly more diplomatic than military, so they wanted Steve specifically. Bullshit. The guy couldn’t even go a month without the world falling apart in his absence. Bucky wanted to write back that Sam was perfectly qualified, that Natasha had done the Accords signings, that Rhodey was combatant and diplomat. This was fucking stupid.

Their time being cut in more than half for what they had left meant they’d either finish the European leg of their tour and skip Russia, or go to Russia early and forget Azzano. Bucky hardly remembered anything from Azzano. He remembered Dungan being there and the fight that had ensued because there were two NCOs and bombs and bullets and, Jesus, they were both going to die and that wasn’t supposed to happen. Besides for getting caught, Azzano was just like England, like Munich, like anywhere else they’d stuck him to fight. (Alright, they didn’t actually fight in England but damn if bombs aren’t the same everywhere regardless of bullets)

Within an hour, Steve had their flights switched and had found a new hotel. He had not appreciated Bucky’s last picks and wanted a bed with actual padding and amenities provided in the shower. (“And a gym, Bucky!”) Azzano had survived after he left and Azzano would survive without him now. More importantly, Bucky had survived after Azzano and he’d survive without Azzano now.

\------------------------

The hotel Steve booked them was somewhere familiar. Russia was more cognizant in his mind than Hydra or Department X. He didn’t know if it was just that James Barnes was better at remembering things or if the Soldier could catalogue more with faulty Chair technology. Bucky had gotten free several times, broke several bones to do it, and as they wandered around the vicinity of their hotel, he suddenly felt the need to run away. Some primal instinct at the base of his skull screamed danger but there was nothing here. There was no way for anything to come back to him here. The Red Room had long been out of commision. He saw that with his own eyes. What was left of it, they collapsed. It had been frozen shut, everyone left in the room was dead. There were no ghosts in Moscow.

No ghosts but James Barnes and the afterbirth of the Soldier. Bucky knew better than to grab Steve’s hand but he walked close enough that their shoulders brushed. He hoped Steve was picking up on how tense he was. If he bolted, he wanted to be caught.

They found themselves in a park and Bucky became slightly more aware. He knew this park. He’d been kept somewhere near by and they did training here. It was more decorated now, art lined the pathways and sat by itself in the middle of fields he used to crawl for hours. But this was the same sprawling acreage of trees and fields and iron fences around to keep people out. And, if  you were Red Room operatives, keep something in.

“I took a shot from there once,” Bucky said, pointing to orange arches over a walking path.

“Behave,” Steve warned lowly. His own mood had lifted when Bucky relaxed by his side and he was walking with his hands behind his back, the picture of ease, confidence, and diplomacy, even while he wasn’t working.

“I’m serious. It was in the 60s. They wanted to see what I could do. It was three in the morning, they had a problem with people sneaking onto the grounds, and they hired to me scare them.”

“Scare them?” Steve asked dubiously.

“I’ll hire a masked, dirty, black clad, and rifle wielding man to go after you at three in the morning when you’re where you’re not supposed to be,” Bucky threatened.

Steve raised his hands in surrender but still didn’t look convinced. It wasn’t so much that he doubted Bucky could be scary. He knew he could be damn scary. What he doubted was that _all_ Bucky did was scare them.

“There’s a beautiful footpath up here,” Bucky explained, pulling Steve along with him. He hadn’t always known it was beautiful. It was good to hide in. He could remember in the fifties, half conscious, half amnesiac, in extraordinary amounts of pain, he’d come here on an escape and hid in the undergrowth for days. The general public were to keep on the footpath so no one found him until someone stepped out to pee in the privacy of some trees and stepped right on Bucky’s bad arm and elicited a scream that neither of them had ever heard before. (Which was saying something because Bucky had screamed a lot in the previous week)

Steve followed along after him with an amused smile and looked around the thick forest they’d stopped in. It _was_ beautiful. There was so much green everywhere. The footpath was narrow and winding like one might find in the middle of an actual forest.

“Sometimes, when I’m in places like this, totally alone and surrounded by something so much bigger than me, I suddenly have to piss.”

“Behave!” Steve shouted as he reached out to hit Bucky’s chest with the back of his hand. But he couldn’t keep the laugh out of his voice or off his face.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s fear,” Bucky laughed, dancing away from Steve’s swinging. “Don’t! Don’t attack me for this! Ain’t piss that’s got my stomach all tied up,” he said, reaching for Steve’s hips and pulling him closer.

“James Barnes!” Steve laughed, pushing him away.

“Come on, what’s anyone gonna do to hurt me?”

“Fire any number of bullets.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “As if. I’m a gift to this country.”

“Ah, yes, the proof that they actively tried to influence the world through murder.”

Bucky shrugged and kept walking through the small thicket. When they broke through on the other side, Bucky started to pull his hair up and Steve grabbed his waist at the same time. When Bucky brought his arms down to fend off whatever the attack was, his hairband sprung from his fingers and went flying somewhere across the park.

“Goddammit, you asshole!” Bucky growled, elbowing Steve’s ribs and glaring at him.

Steve smiled sheepishly and ducked his head. “Sorry?”

“That was the only one I had!”

“Come on, you have a bag back in the hotel.”

“If your patriotic ass hasn’t gotten our room searched and destroyed.”

Steve snorted and knocked his shoulder against Bucky’s before he started walking again. Bucky scowled after him before following sullenly a few paces behind. Again, he felt something behind him, pulling on his sleeve and he turned in the defensive. Instead, he was met with a kid, holding one hand out in front of her and the other behind her back. In her outstretched hand was the black band he’d lost.

“You work fast, kid,” he said in quick Russian. “Go ahead and keep that though. I don’t know where it’s been.”

“It was on the ground over there and I don’t want it. It smells like boy.”

“I do not smell like boy!” Bucky frowned at the sentence and then shook his head. “I smell nice!”

“You smell like boy,” she assured. She shoved her hand forward and shook it a little. “Take it back.”

Bucky sighed and snatched the band away before reaching up to do his hair.

“Can you do it without your fake hand?”

Bucky nearly dropped the band again. “Excuse me?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

She pointed up at his metal hand. “When you’re not wearing it, can you still do your hair?”

“What…” Shit, he was wearing his jacket. He shrugged it off and rolled up his sleeve to show where it was attached to his shoulder. The girl reached up to touch his scars and the metal.

“Well, they didn’t do a very good job.”

“I’ve got a usable arm,” he pointed out dryly.

The girl screwed her mouth to one side. “So you can’t do your hair with one hand?”

“No, I make him do it when something happens to my arm.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Steve who was still standing a few paces ahead, hands shoved in his pockets. The girl grinned when she saw Steve and waved. He freed a hand to wave back.

“Like when the Iron Man shot it off?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Bucky pointed out.

The girl shrugged. “My step dad says that too.” She finally pulled her arm out from behind her back and Bucky raised his eyebrows when it was a plastic prosthetic.

“Can you do your hair with only one hand?” he asked.

“Not yet. I thought you might be able to show me.”

“Sorry, kid.”

She shrugged again. “My step dad says it isn’t possible.”

“Your old man seems like a dick.”

The girl giggled and nodded. “Kind of.”

Bucky reached forward to muss her hair. “Where are your parents now? You shouldn’t be running around on your own.”

“They’re with my little brother by the swings. I don’t like the swings.”

“No, I imagine you can’t do anything the easy way. Why don’t you run back to them so I know you’re safe?” he suggested with a raised eyebrow.

“Can I take a picture with you?” she asked quickly.

“Don’t you want one with the hero?”

“Is he missing an arm like me?”

Bucky felt an actual smile pull at his lip. “You’re feisty. Just like him.”

“You’re not so nice either.”

Bucky shrugged like she had and then squatted down next to her. She produced a phone and then turned to him. “Hold up your hand like this,”  she said, making a slanted parentheses with her prosthetic fingers.

“What for?”

“We’re gonna make a heart.”

“Don’t you want the rock on sign or something? A fist bump?”

She shook her head. “A heart. You’re a hero too. You shouldn’t always look like the bad guy.”

Bucky couldn’t tell if his heart was shattering or growing four sizes. Maybe both. He held up his hand like she wanted and smiled sweetly for a few pictures and when she kept taking them, he scowled theatrically and then made funny faces until she was laughing too hard to keep taking them.

“My doctors so aren’t going to believe this,” she laughed. “Or my parents. Do you want to meet them.”

“I think it’s too early to be meeting parents, kid.” She looked up at him confused. “You’ll get it when you’re older.”

Now she scowled at him. “I hate when people say that.”

“Get used to it. I’m 102 years old and people are still telling me that.”

“But that’s because you lost all your memories.”

“God, you’re mean!” Bucky turned her by her shoulders and pushed her back towards the swings.

“Will you come back?” she asked, skipping backwards to see him. Bucky sighed and stalked over to her, pulled a sharpie from the bag Steve had brought, and wrote down an email address on her good arm.

“You ask for something at that address, I’ll make sure it happens,” he said with a nod. She grinned like sunshine and went skipping off. Bucky went back to Steve and fell into step with him.

“I didn’t know--”

“Not a word, Rogers,” he warned. But he couldn’t keep the smile from his face and he knocked his shoulder into Steve’s as they walked.

\-----------------------------------

They got home an hour or so later and Bucky passed by a decorative mirror fixture in the hallway. He stopped and stared at his hair where it hung windblown and stringy. It made something in him restless and needy and he scowled before walking away. But then, in the kitchen, he found himself finding his shadow in the microwave door and his abstract on the stainless steel fridge. Everything dialed up in his chest and tried to burst free all at once. Bucky didn’t know how to fix it.

Instead, he stalked into the bathroom, past Steve who was immediately put on guard by the sudden black cloud that hung over Bucky’s face. Bucky shut the door and locked it just as Steve tried to open it back up. There was a few moments of silence that only made Bucky even more aware of his body and his facade and started to drive him up a wall.

“Bucky, open the door. You’re scaring me.” Bucky could hear Steve pacing restlessly outside the door and if the heavy footfalls were anything to go by, he was more irritated than worried.

“I can take care of myself,” Bucky snapped. He stared at the mirror, all tense shoulders and glaring, narrowed eyes. His upper lip curled into a snarl but the image of the little girl bounding up to him handing him his hair tie came back and chased away any likeness that he’d normally find in himself to the Soldier. Still, it wasn’t staying. He wasn’t keeping this going. He wasn’t going to second guess himself every time he passed something reflective. That’s what kicked this whole thing off, wasn’t it? Sure, he’d taken back his memories, his dick, his easy smile. He was learning how to relax around people, to trust, to shut off his mind for one damn minute. He’d reconciled with the demons that wanted him to live up to the expectations of James Barnes and with James Barnes’ own demons. But he still fucking looked like something he wasn’t. He’d reconciled everything on the inside, but nothing on the outside had changed.

Not until now. Bucky ran his fingers through his hair, brushed to the point of frizziness now, and then fit it all in one circle of his forefinger and thumb. He took the pair of scissors he’d found in the kitchen and lined the bottom blade against the base of his skull. It was cold but Bucky figured the shiver that ran through his body was more related to the thrill of what he was about to do than the cold metal. He took a deep breath and brought the handles together.

The resistance he met was odd. It wasn’t like pushing a knife into a person or pulling one out of himself. It wasn’t like rolling over in the middle of the night and smacking into Steve’s immovable body. It wasn’t the way Sam tried not to fall and ended up toppling over anyway when Bucky knocked into his shoulder. It was slippery. Every cut he made, most of the hair tilted to the side. He tugged it taut and worked the scissors across the makeshift ponytail and when the scissors finally cut all the way through, his hand fell to his side as if he were holding some great weight. To him, he was.

He dropped the hair in the trash can and shook his hand out before quickly pulling his shirt over his head and cutting through more, working an arc along the base of his skull. Then he was just left with an  uneven chop and he grabbed the clippers from the cabinet, tearing through the packaging to get to the machine.

“What the hell are you doing? You can’t just storm off after...whatever just happened and lock yourself in the bathroom! What are you opening?” Steve called, banging on the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

Bucky ignored him and assembled the pieces he wanted together. He started with the largest guard, smoothing it over his head until it was mostly even. But that left it laying awkwardly in his face so he switched to one down and trimmed it a little further. He stared at the mirror and the short hair and finally, he didn’t feel like he was fighting to be someone. He wasn’t trying to find James Barnes’ grin. He wasn’t avoiding the Soldier’s glare. He didn’t look like either of them.

He took a deep breath and let both of them go with the exhale.

“Open the door or I’m taking it off its hinges!” Steve shouted. “This room is on your card!” The high strain in his voice underscored whatever snippy joke he was trying to get in.

Without further ado, Bucky opened the door and then stepped back because Steve barged in like he always did. When they were fourteen, Bucky had stupidly decided to try touching himself for the first time when Steve was over. To be fair, it had probably been Steve’s stupid smile or the way his shirt clung to him in the water, or the way they woke up tangled together that had set it off.

The boys at school had just started talking about it and, after having been the first boy in their class to kiss a girl, Bucky was feeling a little left out. So he’d told Steve he needed to go change and to give him a few minutes. He’d sat up on his bed and slowly pulled his pants down and then his underwear. It had felt incredibly naughty. All of it. The idea of what he was about to do when some of the boys in his class had already said it was against God. The thought of being mostly naked--naked where it counted--with Steve just the next room over. Even just sitting in his bed without pants on.

Nothing had happened because as soon as he was about to start, in came Steve. Whatever had him all riled up was fast forgotten and both boys just stared at each other. Steve left without saying a word but it hadn’t ever stopped the habit.

Now Steve stood in much the same way he had in 1930-whatever. Both of them stared at each other before Steve slowly reached forward--now was not the time to think about how much Bucky had wanted him to reach out in 1930-whatever--and ran his hand over Bucky’s head. Bucky didn’t offer an explanation.

“You wanna talk about why?” he asked lowly. Bucky shook his head and Steve nodded. “Alright. Then you can grab a broom and clean up your mess.” When Bucky turned to walk away, though, Steve grabbed him and tugged him back. “Wait, I want to make sure you’re okay. That you didn’t cut yourself too badly.”

His hands were soft on Bucky’s scalp and he reached for the clippers a few times to even out a patch that Bucky had missed. When he turned him, Bucky settled his hands on Steve’s hips and held their bodies close, even once Steve had set aside the shaver and simply rested his cheek on Bucky’s head. It felt like kissing him when he’d not shaved in a day or so and it sent tingles over his cheek and jaw, somewhere between a tickle and a scratch.

That’s how Bucky felt too. Being so close to Steve, waiting for a fall out. It was a tickle now but any sudden movement and it’d become a scratch. Instead of quickly moving though, Steve lifted his head and kissed Bucky gently and then a little more firmly, reaching up to tilt his head back. Bucky curled his fingers in Steve’s shirt and helped lift himself to the bathroom counter when Steve grabbed his waist. He let him step between his legs and kiss him again.

Bucky brought his hands up to either side of Steve’s neck and marveled at how his thumbs looked in juxtaposition to each other against his pale skin. Steve moved Bucky’s metal hand to his mouth and kissed his wrist and his palm and then each of his knuckles when Bucky curled his hand instinctively. When he pressed Bucky’s loose fist to Steve’s own cheek, Bucky opened his hand again and smoothed his thumb over his cheekbone. He let his fingers slip into Steve’s hair on the back of his head--slightly longer than when they’d left two weeks ago--when Steve leaned forward to kiss him. It was slow, open, soft. Everything that had made Bucky so happy to be manipulated by Steve. He’d wasted so much time.

How had his mouth felt before he was big, when he was still sick? Were his lips chapped bad enough to feel? Had his mouth always been this soft or had his teeth gotten in the way? Did it really matter? Bucky would have been putty in his hands anyway. He could marvel at Steve’s ribs in the forties. He could damn sure have gotten off with whatever kind of mouth Steve had had.

Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s neck and his legs around his waist, drawing him closer and holding them together. Steve was different than the forties and now Bucky was different twice over and they still moved together, still knew each other as intimately as their own bodies. Steve kissed Bucky’s neck and the lower he went, the louder Bucky got until he was pressing his hips into Steve’s. Steve hooked his arms under Bucky’s legs and carried him into the bedroom.

They didn’t see any of Russia the next day.

\-----------------------

Flying back to America was bitter sweet. Bucky didn’t feel quite done yet. He couldn’t place exactly what it was that was missing still, but he knew it was something. He was restless on the plane and felt like people were staring at him. Could they see his cracked former shell? Did he still resemble the Soldier more than anything? An actual soldier saluted him at one point and, on instinct, he mimicked and after that the air seemed less crowded.

As soon as they landed, Steve had to go to Stark Towers to meet up with whomever he’d be working with. He kissed Bucky thoroughly and to Happy’s discomfort and promised to see him at home, to text him when it was all over. But Bucky didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to open his windows and smell the ocean that Steve loved so much for some reason or another. So he went to the next best place and fell asleep.

\-----------------------------

Bucky Barnes was laying on his couch because why wouldn’t he be? Sam scowled at the unmoving lump of blankets and boots and went back to making breakfast. Well, he said breakfast. It was a smoothie and a bowl of cereal. Nothing fancy. When he pulsed his strawberries and kale in the blender, he heard the lump groan and turn over on the couch. The second time he pulsed the blender, a pillow hit him in the head and knocked some tupperware off the counter. Asshole.

Sam split the smoothie into two glasses and brought them into the living room. The lump had eyes now and Bucky glared at him the entire time Sam settled into his chair and passed one glass across the coffee table to him. Sam had been trying to get Bucky to run on more than black coffee and protein bars but had been, as yet, unsuccessful. At least Barnes wasn’t still knocking drinks to the floor.

“I ain’t drinkin’ that.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just try it. Look, it ain’t green.”

Bucky scoffed and turned back over on the couch, burying his face against the cushions and arm of the couch. Sam rolled his eyes and turned on the TV. He made sure it was muted and captions were on before reading the news. See, he wasn’t so different from Steve after all.

“What’re the scars on your back from?” Bucky mumbled in the middle of a CNN argument that Sam couldn’t keep up with. Sam glanced over at him and then leaned back in his seat to keep them out of sight. Not that it particularly helped. One went across his chest too. And there were the burns down his side. Damn Barnes for interrupting his mostly naked morning routine.

“The jet pack rubs,” he said with a shrug. “Wear something long enough, it breaks the skin over and over and the skin stops fighting back.”

“How many are there?” Bucky turned over in his cocoon and peered out over the edge of the blanket.

“Uh, the one around my chest and shoulders, those long ones down my back, and some under my ass and around my thighs,” he listed with a shrug.

“Just those huh?” Bucky asked sarcastically.

“You’re missing an arm,” Sam replied drily without missing a beat.

“You don’t even think about them, do you?”

Sam leveled a wary gaze on him and then slouched down in the chair. “Not until intruders point them out while I’m eating breakfast.”

Bucky pushed the glass back to Sam. “This is not breakfast.” Sam rolled his eyes and took the drink, finishing it in one go without looking away from Bucky. Bucky scowled in disgust. Sam had noticed he’d perfected various emotions with the same gesture. “You’re an abomination.”

“It’s a fruit smoothie, dude. It’s ice cream that isn’t cold anymore.”

“Do not slander ice cream like that.”

“You’re so weird, dude.”

Bucky was silent for a while longer and Sam assumed he’d gone back to sleep. Of course, as soon as he turned back to the news, Bucky started again.

“How long did it take you to stop staring at them in the mirror?”

“I don’t know, man. A few years. These ones were harder. Are harder.” He ran his hand down the bubbly burn scars on his side.

“From when he died?”

Sam nodded and got lost in thought as he smoothed his fingers over the waxy skin. “Shit, Riley was worse with the scars. He always picked when it got raw so he scarred like you, all deep and sunken.”

“You  know how to give a guy confidence,” Bucky muttered. He rolled his eyes and turned back over to lay on his stomach.

“He loved ‘em though. Thought they looked so fuckin’ cool on him and he loved to kiss mine. Used to say it was our version of a couple’s tattoo.”

“That’s pretty intense for a tattoo.”

“You’re telling me.”

“You loved him.”

“We were gonna get married,” Sam agreed. “I mean, not any time soon. Neither one of us was planning on retiring. It was hell but…” He shrugged. “It was a hell we knew. We had worked out our lives around being in the military and it wasn’t like we just joined up ‘cause of college benefits.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Yeah, we both took some time off together. Both joined up after 9/11, did our basics, did a half tour, and then came back to go to school and then went back out.”

“Everything with him?”

“Always did everything with him,” Sam confirmed with a nod. “I mean, we didn’t know each other until we met in basics. We just happened to have both had the same idea. Join up, protect. Aim high. Fly-fight-win.”

“Didn’t expect to actually be flyin’ did you?”

Sam laughed and shook his head. “Nah, man. But it was cool as hell.” He smiled at the memories, looking equally young and happy and old and wise. He nodded over at Bucky. “What about you, dude? What’re yours from?”

“Not from a lover,” Bucky retorted.

“Dude, they weren’t _from_ Riley. I’d have gotten ‘em either way. Gotta thank Stark for the new designs. Lighter. Doesn’t rub.”

“Got all that kevlar on under it too.”

“Yeah.”

They both stopped talking and Bucky took the cereal Sam had forgotten about. Sam, in turn, nursed the second smoothie.

“Gonna make you give me some suga one day after I drink these,” he threatened at the same time Bucky said, “The long one is from the reinforcement surgery.”

“Reinforcement surgery?” Sam asked at the same time Bucky growled, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

They stared at each other--Bucky glared--before one relented. “Yeah, reinforcement surgery. To add the adamantium to my ribs and spine.”

“Adamantium like--”

“Fucking Wolverine. I _know_. I got it first.” Bucky sat up and pulled his shirt over his head. “There was that one on the back and these ones,” he said, pointing to a shorter one down his sternum and branching under his collar bones. There wasn’t a lot of mess on his chest. Most the damage that came by then was after they perfected the serum. He turned back around.

“I’ve got burn scars like you. This is roadburn. You’ve seen how the Soldier reacts to cars.” Sam snorted. “It got frostbitten after we were stuck in a safe house for a week afterwards so it never healed. This one is from an endurance test. I guess it was the early fifties or something. They were trying to see how conditioned I was. They put a small explosive in my hand and told me not to move. I was burned all to hell but this is all that was left eventually.” It was hardly anything. More of a firecracker really. It had hurt like an IED though. He writhed for days and it only made it worse. The threat of taking his other hand didn’t help.

“These,” he said, touching the thin scars under his right arm on his ribs, “were from the forties. They wanted me to know pain. Cut between my ribs until they couldn’t see what they were doing.” He remembered the feel of the blood soaking into his pants. He was delirious with pain and thought he’d peed himself but it was thick and kept spreading. “I think I passed out is why there isn’t more.”

He turned and exposed the arching ones over his hips. “They didn’t justify these ones. They just cut me.” He saw Sam gag slightly out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s the hole in your arm? Bullet wound?”

Bucky grinned woflishly at him. “That’s just where Stever bit me the other night.”

“Ah, man, fuck you. You know I don’t wanna hear that shit,” Sam laughed, throwing a pillow at him. “What about the cut down your shoulder?”

Bucky frowned before his face lit up and he started to laugh too. “Oh, man, you so aren’t gonna believe this.”

“Try me.”

“Man, alright, so, like, in the 30s and all you couldn’t be with another guy, you know?” Sam nodded that he did, one eyebrow already working its way up to his hairline. “Alright, so I was with this fella from school and we were foolin’ around some. It wasn’t nothin’ serious. Just guys bein’ dudes.”

“Man, stop with that. I’m so sorry I ever showed you that,” Sam groaned, but he was still grinning. He could feel himself leaning forward like a girl at a sleepover. He’d been waiting for this kind of gossip sharing all his life.

“And we did the do and all and we were laying in bed and it musta been three in the morning or something. Like, it was _dead_ outside. No more drunken idiots, no more parties. Dead. Still, quiet, and dark as sin.”

“You’d know all about sin.” Bucky threw the pillow back at him.

“So we’re laying there, talkin’, touchin’, not wantin’ to do nothin’ but be with each other before it became too gay.” Sam rolled his eyes next to him. “His parents was supposed to be out all weekend but, lo and behold, just as we’s gettin’ ready to go again, we hear the lock in the door.” Sam didn’t know which he was enjoying more. Bucky telling him sex gossip from before World War II or Bucky slipping back into his Brooklyn accent, heavy and thick as if it had never left his tongue.

“He’s freakin’ the fuck out. I’m trynna calm him down or something and we know we’re totally fucked. We look fucked, our clothes are fuckin’ everywhere. I think my shirt was actually in the living room. I never got it back. So I’m grabbin’ clothes fast as I can. Ain’t got my suspenders. My belt’s just tied around my waist. One sock’s missin’. It’s a shitshow, Sam. And we can hears his parents comin’ up the hallway and he’s wrestlin’ with the window and I go out the window.

“Now, I’ve got my fair share of practice sneakin’ outta Brooklyn windows. Hydra didn’t have to teach me nothin’ ‘bout that. I know every damn type of balcony and fire escape that there is. So, I’m goin’ out this window, ready to jump and tuck on the fire escape. Except there ain’t nothin’ there. Ones of the panels was missin’. I go right through it.

“Now, normally there’s another escape right below but there’d been a string of robberies or some shit just before and the people down below had taken their flooring slats out too. I went from my guy’s third floor to the second floor, hit a loose railing, scratched the fuck out of my shoulder, and then hit the ground. I broke an ankle, my back hurt so bad I couldn’t breath, my knee was fucked. And I look up at him and he’s starin’ down at me and I see the light flood his room where his parents opened the door and he turned ‘round lookin’ guilty as fuck. Man, I had to run on a hurt ankle. It was stupid.

“I get home and Steve’s all bleary eyed, askin’ wheres I been and what I was doin’. I had to lie and say I sent myself off the side of boat trynna bring in some fishin’ line and caught myself on one-a them hooks. He fuckin’ laughed about catchin’ jerkfish all the rest of the year, I swears to God.”

Sam was suddenly overcome by an all encompassing, crushing fondness for these two super-idiots. “Man, you’re crazy. I can’t believe you survived that. What were you? Seventeen?”

“Eighteen. The last thing we needed was for the cops to be on us twice over, y’know?”

“And Steve believe you were pulling in fishing line at three in the morning?”

“Hey, man, we pulled all sorts of odd shifts to get food on the table.”

Sam nodded. “I can respect that.” They both fell silent, grinning and lost in thought. If Sam was strong enough to love his scars, to love his body, then Bucky definitely was too. Bucky hadn’t lost the love of his life. That moment wasn’t scarred into his body for eternity. He wouldn’t think of Steve every time he saw the deep ugly gashes and Steve had no matching ones. (Except a bite mark on his shoulder to match Bucky’s arm) If Sam didn’t hide his scars then Bucky didn’t have to either.

They had stories. They brought him to this point. He knew he could never really leave the Soldier in Moscow, there was no bullet wound in his head. James Barnes hadn’t been beaten to death in Austria. He’d been saved by friends who’d be whooping his ass for not using the life they saved to its full potential. This Bucky never knew them. Could only imagine what Dungan’s handshake felt like, how Morita smelled in the morning, Dernier’s laugh. To let James Barnes die meant letting them die too. Rejecting the Soldier meant he was rejecting closure for families that still hurt because of him. Sam refused to forget Riley so he could not-deal with his scars. Bucky had no right to do any less.

“You stayin’ here a while?” Sam asked after a few moments of quiet.

“‘Til Steve gets back.”

“Yeah, sure, come on in. Stay,” Sam offered sarcastically and threw the pillow at Bucky again. “I ain’t got a problem bein’ your babysitter.”

“Doll, I’m babysitting’ you.”

“You’re such a fuckin’ dick, y’know?” Sam laughed.

“Musta picked it up from you.” Bucky tucked his pillow under his head and closed his eyes. “Now go away. I’m jet lagged and exhausted.”

“Do the dishes when you wake up,” Sam said, even as he was redistributing the blanket over Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky hummed and held up his middle finger before falling asleep.

\-------------------

“What’s this?” Bucky asked. He didn’t look particularly interested if the way he was thrown across the couch with one leg hooked over the back of it and the other crooked against the cushions, arms folded under his head and over his chest, but Steve could catch how his eyes darted back and forth and stayed locked on the screen. Steve looked away from his best friend to the TV and a small smile pulled at his lips. “That’s LA’s pride week.”

“What that’s?”

“It’s where the LGBT community gets together and celebrates, well, pride.”

“Pride of what?”

“Just...being proud to be who they are.”

“Jesus. Can you imagine the last time we were this conscious, kids were gettin’ arrested for just holdin’ hands and now they’re…” He gestured to the TV where two scantily dressed men were passionately kissing each other.

“Yeah, a lot’s changed. I  mean, it’s not all good. There’s still a lot of…”

“Shut up and enjoy the pride.”

“It’s just called pride.”

Bucky sat up enough to pull his legs to his body and open up half the couch. Steve took his cue and sat down next to him.

“What’s with the rainbows?”

“Uh, it’s the Pride flag.”

“The rainbow?”

“Ha, yeah, there’s a whole explanation. I don’t really remember what it is.”

“Have you ever been?”

Steve looked over at Bucky sidelong but Bucky’s eyes were on the TV. “Sam goes. I’ve never really been.”

“Bet they want you there.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“I mean, you’re kind of the whole point, aren’t you? The perfect American man who also likes it up…”

“Enough, Bucky.”

“Just sayin’.”

Steve sighed next to him and lifted his arm slightly. Bucky ducked under his pressed his head back against Steve’s hand. Obediently, Steve worked his fingers against the fuzzy hair on his scalp.

“You wanna go?”

Bucky looked up at him with eyes wide in fear and just as much excitement. All he said, though, was, “Not with Sam.”

“Oh, shush. You know you like him.”

“Don’t wanna see that much of him all up in someone else’s face.”

“I don’t think he does that. He’s just there to be visible and proud. He used to go with Riley when they could.”

Bucky nodded against Steve’s side and then nodded again. “I want to go. Gonna have to find you an outfit though.”

“I think a shirt and shorts is fine.”

“I’m deciding it’s not.”

“I don’t think you get to make that decision for me.”

“Shut up. We’ll get you something.”

Steve sighed (only a little adoringly) and dropped a heavy hand on Bucky’s chest. “And what would we do for you?” he hummed, rubbing over one of Bucky’s pectorals.

Bucky colored slightly and he looked away before glancing back and then looking away again. “I thought...well, I wanted to wear a tank top...but with the scars and all…”

“Buck, you know you’re gorgeous.”

“I ain’t denying that. Let me finish.” He brought his hand up to thread his fingers through Steve’s and knocked them against his sternum twice. “I thought, maybe it’d be cool to do some glitter on the scars. And, like, one of the mesh shirts, I guess. To show it…”

Steve smiled softly and squeezed Bucky’s hand. “I don’t see why we couldn’t do something like that.”

The window as open again and seagulls squawked in the same way they had a century ago. That late afternoon humidity was settling in the apartment, only occasionally shifted by the AC or fan. There was no touch of Moscow’s cold. None of the thin air of Austria. The colors of Munich and the historic future of Frankfurt hadn’t followed them home. There was no drizzle or green from Ireland outside their window. Still, mud and dirt from all of them were trapped in the soles of their shoes, trapped in the inner workings of Bucky’s veins. Steve came back to the Brooklyn harbors and Bucky came back to Europe. Their history was so interwoven into places it might as well have been part of the pavement. And those places, that pavement, was a mighty fine place to start building a future. A future where Bucky could go home with Steve after a technology expo. A future where there were always an arm around his waist to catch him when he fell. A future where he could hold Steve’s hand walking down the street in the middle of New York while they celebrated who they were, who they always had been, who they’d always be. A future waiting for them as if they weren’t actually men out of time, but men placed exactly in the time that they should have been. They waited and it waited. Brooklyn waited.

Bucky was done waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where Bucky Barnes fell or if he's supposed to be Irish or how to dance a jig or what Europe looks like or anything about Russian parks or how to get into Austria. I was highly unqualified to write this fic and Google maps helps very little. (Though an image of Munich is now my background on my computer)
> 
> Yell at me [here](http://abarbaricyalp.tumblr.com)


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